Summary

This classic book uses an exceptional art program, featuring impeccable accurate five-color illustrations, to introduce readers to the vast world of painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and the minor arts. With its effectively written, balanced, and interesting narrative, this book presents art as a succession of styles--from Prehistory through the 20th century--and enlarges the readers' capacity to appreciate works of art individually. Written more than 40 years ago, this text has been constantly reworked to respond to the needs of this ever-changing field. A reference work suitable for those employed in all art media, including painters, sculptors, photographers, and architects.

Table of Contents

Prefaces and Acknowledgments

12

(16)

Introduction

16

(10)

PART ONE The Ancient World

26

(178)

Map

30

(2)

Prehistoric Art

32

(10)

The Old Stone Age

32

(4)

The New Stone Age

36

(6)

Egyptian Art

42

(20)

The Old Kingdom

42

(10)

The Middle Kingdom

52

(2)

The New Kingdom

54

(1)

Eighteenth Dynasty

54

(8)

Ancient Near Eastern Art

62

(20)

Sumerian Art

62

(11)

Assyrian Art

73

(2)

Persian Art

75

(7)

Aegean Art

82

(12)

Cycladic Art

82

(1)

Minoan Art

83

(6)

Mycenaean Art

89

(5)

Greek Art

94

(56)

The Geometric Style

95

(1)

The Orientalizing Style

96

(1)

The Greek Gods and Goddesses

97

(1)

Archaic Vase Painting

98

(3)

The Hero in Greek Legend

101

(1)

Theater in Ancient Greece

102

(1)

Archaic Sculpture

103

(8)

Architecture

111

(12)

Classical Sculpture

123

(2)

Music in Ancient Greece

125

(10)

Classical Painting

135

(3)

Fourth-Century Sculpture

138

(4)

Hellenistic Sculpture

142

(6)

Coins

148

(2)

Etruscan Art

150

(8)

Roman Art

158

(46)

Architecture

159

(11)

Sculpture

170

(14)

Painting

184

(5)

Theater and Music in Ancient Rome

189

(15)

Primary Sources for Part One

192

(8)

Timeline One

200

(4)

PART TWO The Middle Ages

204

(178)

Map

208

(2)

Early Christian and Byzantine Art

210

(42)

Early Christian Art

213

(1)

The Liturgy of Mass

214

(8)

Versions of the Bible

222

(1)

Biblical, Church, and Celestial Beings

223

(5)

The Life of Jesus

228

(1)

Byzantine Art

229

(19)

Covenants Old and New

248

(4)

Early Medieval Art

252

(22)

Carolingian Art

257

(1)

Guilds: Masters and Apprentices

258

(6)

Ottonian Art

264

(10)

Romanesque Art

274

(28)

Architecture

275

(4)

Monasticism and Christian Monastic Orders

279

(7)

Sculpture

286

(9)

Painting and Metalwork

295

(3)

Hildegard of Bingen

298

(4)

Gothic Art

302

(80)

Architecture

302

(6)

Medieval Music and Theater

308

(18)

Sculpture

326

(14)

Painting

340

(42)

Primary Sources for Part Two

364

(12)

Timeline Two

376

(6)

PART THREE The Renaissance Through The Rococo

382

(250)

Map

386

(2)

The Early Renaissance in Italy

388

(42)

Florence: 1400-1450

389

(9)

Scientific Perspective

398

(14)

Central and Northern Italy: 1450-1500

412

(10)

Early Italian Renaissance Theater and Music

422

(8)

The High Renaissance in Italy

430

(32)

Theater and Music During the High Renaissance

442

(20)

Mannerism and Other Trends

462

(22)

Painting

463

(3)

Music and Theater in the Age of Mannerism

466

(10)

Sculpture

476

(2)

Architecture

478

(6)

``Late Gothic'' Painting, Sculpture, and the Graphic Arts

484

(20)

Renaissance Versus ``Late Gothic'' Painting

484

(12)

Music in Fifteenth-Century Flanders

496

(3)

``Late Gothic'' Sculpture

499

(2)

The Graphic Arts

501

(1)

Printmaking

502

(2)

The Renaissance in the North

504

(24)

Germany

504

(12)

Music and Theater in the Northern Renaissance

516

(1)

The Netherlands

517

(5)

France

522

(4)

England

526

(2)

The Baroque in Italy and Spain

528

(26)

Painting in Italy

529

(9)

Baroque Music in Italy

538

(2)

Architecture in Italy

540

(5)

Sculpture in Italy

545

(4)

Painting in Spain

549

(1)

Baroque Theater in Italy and Spain

549

(5)

The Baroque in Flanders and Holland

554

(20)

Flanders

554

(6)

Holland

560

(8)

Music and Theater in Holland and Germany

568

(6)

The Baroque in France and England

574

(18)

France: The Age of Versailles

574

(6)

Baroque Theater and Music in France

580

(7)

England

587

(1)

Baroque Theater and Music in England

588

(4)

The Rococo

592

(40)

France

592

(6)

England

598

(4)

Germany and Austria

602

(2)

Rococo Music

604

(2)

Modern Harmony

606

(1)

Italy

607

(3)

Rococo Theater

610

(22)

Primary Sources for Part Three

612

(14)

Timeline Three

626

(6)

PART FOUR The Modern World

632

(318)

Map

638

(2)

Neoclassicism and Romanticism

640

(66)

Neoclassicism

640

(1)

Painting

641

(7)

Sculpture

648

(2)

Architecture

650

(1)

Neoclassical Theater

651

(5)

Neoclassical Music

656

(2)

The Romantic Movement

658

(1)

Painting

658

(1)

New Printmaking Techniques

659

(23)

The Romantic Movement in Literature and the Theater

682

(4)

Sculpture

686

(4)

Romanticism in Music

690

(4)

Architecture

694

(7)

Decorative Arts

701

(1)

Photography

702

(4)

Realism and Impressionism

706

(30)

Painting

706

(14)

Nationalism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Music

720

(5)

Sculpture

725

(4)

Architecture

729

(3)

Realism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Theater

732

(2)

Decorative Arts

734

(2)

Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and Art Nouveau

736

(34)

Painting

736

(10)

Music in the Post-Impressionist Era

746

(9)

Sculpture

755

(1)

Theater in the Post-Impressionist Era

756

(1)

Architecture

757

(7)

Materials of Modern Architecture

764

(1)

Photography

764

(6)

Twentieth-Century Painting

770

(66)

Painting Before World War I

770

(1)

Expressionism

770

(8)

Abstraction

778

(2)

Music Before World War I

780

(4)

Theater Before World War I

784

(2)

Fantasy

786

(3)

Realism

789

(1)

Painting Between the Wars

789

(13)

Theater Between the Wars

802

(6)

Music Between the Wars

808

(4)

Painting Since World War II

812

(6)

Theater Since World War II

818

(6)

Music Since World War II

824

(7)

Late Modernism

831

(5)

Twentieth-Century Sculpture

836

(26)

Sculpture Before World War I

836

(3)

Sculpture Between the Wars

839

(8)

Sculpture Since 1945

847

(15)

Twentieth-Century Architecture

862

(26)

Architecture Before World War I

862

(4)

Architecture Between the Wars

866

(9)

Architecture Since 1945

875

(13)

Twentieth-Century Photography

888

(20)

The First Half-Century

888

(14)

Photography Since 1945

902

(1)

Documentary Photography

902

(6)

Postmodernism

908

(42)

Postmodern Art

910

(1)

Architecture

910

(6)

Architecture After Postmodernism: What's Next

916

(2)

Sculpture

918

(3)

Painting

921

(1)

Photography

922

(1)

Postmodernism in Music and Theater

923

(1)

Postscript: Postmodern Theory

923

(27)

Primary Sources for Part Four

926

(18)

Timeline Four

944

(6)

Books for Further Reading

950

(9)

Discography

959

(1)

Glossary

960

(7)

Art and Architecture Websites

967

(5)

Index

972

(24)

Credits

996

Excerpts

Chapter One

Prehistoric Art

THE OLD STONE AGE

When did human beings start creating works of art? What prompted them to do so? What did these earliest works of art look like? Every history of art must begin with these questions--and with the admission that we cannot answer them. Our earliest-known ancestors began to walk on two feet about four million years ago, but how they were using their hands remains unknown to us. Not until more than two million years later do we meet the earliest evidence of toolmaking. Humans must have been using tools all along, however. After all, apes will pick up a stick to knock down a banana or a stone to throw at an enemy. The making of tools is a more complex matter. It demands first of all the ability to think of sticks or stones as "fruit knockers" or "bone crackers," not only when they are needed for such purposes but at other times as well.

Once humans were able to do this, they gradually discovered that some sticks or stones had a handier shape than others, and they put them aside for future use. They selected and "appointed" certain sticks or stones as tools because they had begun to connect form and function. The sticks, of course, have not survived, but a few of the stones have. They are large pebbles or chunks of rock that show the marks of repeated use for the same operation, whatever that may have been. The next step was to try chipping away at these tools-by-appointment in order to improve their shape. This is the first craft of which we have evidence, and with it we enter a phase of human development known as the Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age, which lasted from about 40,000 to 10,000 B.C.

Cave Art

CHAUVET. The most striking works of Paleolithic art are the images of animals incised, painted, or sculptured on the rock surfaces of caves. In the recently discovered Chauvet cave in southeastern France, we meet the earliest paintings known to us, dating from more than 30,000 years ago. Ferocious lions, panthers, rhinoceroses, bears, reindeer, and mammoths are depicted with extraordinary vividness, along with bulls, horses, birds, and occasionally humans. These paintings already show an assurance and refinement far removed from any humble beginnings. What a vivid, lifelike image is the depiction of horses seen in figure 28! We are amazed not only by the keen observation and the assured, vigorous outlines, but even more perhaps by the power and expressiveness of these creatures. Unless we are to believe that images such as this came into being in a single, sudden burst, we must assume that they were preceded by thousands of years of development about which we know nothing at all.

ALTAMIRA AND LASCAUX. On the basis of differences among the tools and other remains found there, scholars have divided up later "cavemen" into several groups, each named after a characteristic site. Of these it is the so-called Aurignacians and Magdalenians who stand out for the gifted artists they produced and for the important role art must have played in their lives. Besides Chauvet, the major sites are at Altamira, in northern Spain (fig. 29), and Lascaux, in the Dordogne region of France (figs. 30 and 31). At Lascaux, as at Chauvet, bison, deer, horses, and cattle race across walls and ceiling in wild profusion. Some of them are simply outlined in black, others filled in with bright earth colors, but all show the same uncanny sense of life. No less important, the style remains essentially the same between the two caves, despite the gap of thousands of years--testimony to the remarkable stability of Paleolithic culture. Gone, however, are the fiercest of beasts.

How did this extraordinary art happen to survive intact over so many thousands of years? The question can be answered easily enough. The pictures never occur near the mouth of a cave, where they would be open to easy view and destruction, but only in the darkest recesses, as far from the entrance as possible (fig. 32). Some can be reached only by crawling on hands and knees, and the path is so intricate that one would soon be lost without an expert guide. In fact, the cave at Lascaux was discovered purely by chance in 1940 by some neighborhood boys whose dog had fallen into a hole that led to the underground chamber.

What purpose did these images serve? Hidden away as they are in the bowels of the earth, to protect them from the casual intruder, they must have been considered far more serious than decoration. There can be little doubt that they were produced as part of a magic ritual. But of what kind? The traditional explanation is that their origin lies in hunting magic. According to this theory, in "killing" the image of an animal, people of the Old Stone Age thought they had killed its vital spirit; this later evolved into fertility magic, practiced deep within the bowels of the earth. But how are we to account for the presence at Chauvet of lions and other dangerous creatures that we know were not hunted? Perhaps initially cavemen assumed the identity of lions and bears to aid in the hunt. Although it cannot be disproved, this proposal is not completely satisfying. In addition to being highly speculative, it fails to explain many curious features of cave art.

There is a growing consensus that cave paintings must incorporate a very early form of religion. If so, the creatures found in them embody a spiritual meaning that makes of them the distant ancestors of the animal divinities and their half-human, half-animal cousins we shall meet throughout the Near East and the Aegean. Indeed, how else are we to account for their existence? Moreover, such a hypothesis accords as well with the belief that nature is filled with spirits. This belief was found the world over in the ethnographic societies that survived intact until recently.

The existence of cave rituals relating to both human and animal fertility would seem to be confirmed by a unique group of Paleolithic drawings found in the 1950s on the walls of the cave of Addaura, near Palermo in Sicily (fig. 33). These images, incised into the rock with quick and sure lines, show human figures in dancelike movements, along with some animals; and, as at Lascaux, we again find several layers of images superimposed on one another. Here, then, we seem to be on the verge of that fusion of human and animal identity that distinguishes the earliest historical religions of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

POSSIBLE ORIGINS. Some of the cave pictures may even provide a clue to the origin of this tradition of fertility magic. In a good many instances, the shape of the animal seems to have been suggested by the natural formation of the rock, so that its body coincides with a bump, or its contour follows a vein or crack as far as possible. We all know how our imagination sometimes makes us see many sorts of images in chance formations such as clouds or blots. Perhaps at first the Stone Age artist merely reinforced the outlines of such images with a charred stick from the fire. It is tempting to think that those who proved particularly good at finding such images were given a special status as artist-magicians so that they could perfect their image-hunting, until finally they learned how to make images with little or no help from chance formations, though they continued to welcome such aid.

Carved and Painted Objects

Apart from large-scale cave art, the people of the Upper Paleolithic also produced small, hand-sized drawings and carvings in bone, horn, or stone, skillfully cut by means of flint tools. The earliest of these found so far are small figures of mammoth ivory from a cave in southwestern Germany, made 30,000 years ago. Even they, however, are already so accomplished that they too must be the fruit of an artistic tradition many thousands of years old. The graceful, harmonious curves of a running horse (fig. 34) could hardly be improved upon by a more recent sculptor. Many years of handling have worn down some details of the tiny animal. (The two converging lines on the shoulder, indicating a dart or wound, were not part of the original design.)

Some of these carvings suggest that the objects may have originated with the recognition and elaboration of some chance resemblance. Earlier Stone Age people were content to collect pebbles in whose natural shape they saw something that apparently rendered them "magic." Echoes of this approach can sometimes be felt in later, more fully worked pieces. The so-called "Venus" of Willendorf (fig. 35), one of many such female figurines, has a bulbous roundness of form that recalls an egg-shaped "sacred pebble." Her navel, the central point of the design, is a natural cavity in the stone. She and like carvings are often considered fertility figures, based on the spiritual beliefs of "preliterate" societies of modern times. Although the idea is tempting, we cannot be certain that such parallels existed in the Old Stone Age. Likewise, the masterful Bison (fig. 36) of reindeer horn owes its compact, expressive outline in part to the contours of the palm-shaped piece of antler from which it was carved. It is a worthy companion to the splendid beasts at Altamira, Lascaux, and Chauvet.